Tonight the sky is an unsettled ocean just above our heads, drowning the sunset and Tijuana in a cloudburst of black rain. I stare through the windshield of the Explorer, seeing the watery crimson taillights ahead without seeing them, fascinated by the wet eruptions of raindrops on the glass. I feel my vision relax and blur with the rivulets, which slowly build into a flood — until the wipers click back and forth and I focus on Avenida Revolucion again, a chain of vehicles disappearing into the rain.

“Hey,” says Nick behind the wheel. “You’re too quiet. What’s going on in that head of yours?” The warmth in his voice wraps me like a blanket.

“You really wanna know?” I still can’t believe he wants to know what I’m thinking. “Really really?”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

“Well, I was just wondering if Saman is happier without me.”

“You think about him a lot?” The tone is casual. Deceptively casual.

I’m getting used to the way Nick’s brain works. There’s no such thing as an innocent question with him. He always works an angle of some kind. He’s probably wondering if I’m projecting emotions onto him that I wanted to experience with my husband.

“I hardly think about Saman at all,” I admit. “In fact, I spend more time thinking about how I don’t think about him, than actually thinking about him.” I replay the sentence in my mind and laugh a little. “I’m not sure that made sense.”

“Hang on,” Nick warns, giving me a millisecond to brace myself. His arms are a sudden jerk in my direction, darting around a line of idling cars, shooting through a red light and the gap in traffic underneath it. I’m pressed back into my seat, then slammed forward into the seatbelt as he skids to a stop against the curb. “Got it!”

It takes me a moment to realize he’s referring to our parking space, a prime piece of curb on Avenida Revolucion, jam-packed even on a soggy Wednesday night like this. It takes me another moment to realize our parking space is actually double supergood prime — like, just a few storefronts down from El Fez, the Moroccan restaurant I picked for dinner.

We scramble through the downpour and splash across the sidewalk and barge into the restaurant, breathless and grinning. The layout is baffling — we find ourselves stuck in front of a display case of Moroccan antiques with a drawn velvet curtain behind it. A Mexican hostess pushes through the curtain, drawn by the delicate chiming of a door-mounted bell. She grabs a couple menus and leads us toward a murky corner of the entryway…

…which turns out to be a narrow stairway of nightmarish oak. The dark stairs lead almost straight up, turning every tenth tread or so, until we emerge onto the second floor. El Fez’s dining room is notable for two reasons — it’s ridiculously cramped, only big enough for 7 tables, and the walls are paneled with mirrors to make the space seem larger. Nick and I are infinite, reflected in one wall to the other and back again, an endless loop of receding portraits.

Our waiter is a Moroccan man. The English he speaks to Nick isn’t much better than the Spanish he speaks to me. Nick gets a kick out of the linguistic juxtaposition, only interjecting to remind me to order my Diet Coke sin hielo — without ice.

“Por supuesto” — of course — I say to Nick, then turn to the waiter with a worldly sigh. “Sin hielo, por favor.” Ice cubes are just as risky as any other form of water in Mexico.

After the waiter retreats I consider my reflection in the mirrored wall. “Do you think I look Mexican?”

Across the table reflection-Nick grins. “A foreigner might think you look Mexican, but a Mexican never would.”

“Why’s that?” I ask, turning back to him.

He tries to say something, but nothing comes out. His mouth opens, then closes again. And stays closed. His icy blue stare is becoming more intent every moment, as if we’re the only two people left alive in a horror movie.

“Huh?” I don’t know what else to say.

“Because of your features,” Nick finally mutters. “Your features aren’t nortena or Mesoamerican Indian or anything. Not to somebody who knows. Like your cheekbones, the way your cheekbones, uh…” His voice trails off into silence and he averts his gaze.

It takes me a million years to muster the strength to speak. “I know I’m not easy to look at. This eye…”

Nick is transformed with fury. His eyes turn into slivers aimed away, his jaw clenches so tight I can almost hear it crack. “You’re beautiful, Nooshin. Fucking beautiful.”

I blink at him. Dumbstruck. Hope fluttering in my flat chest.

But then I realize he’s probably just saying the right thing at the right time, without really meaning it. Nick has a gift for that. Trust me, I know. I’ve seen him in action before.

The only reason I might be wrong is what happens next. Still not looking at me, he folds his arms across his chest — across his heart — in defensive KEEP OUT body language. Pushing me away. Maybe that’s how you know you matter to Nick. When he distances you, rather than making you feel close and intimate.

Dinner is several courses of yummy food and even better conversation. He’s full of fascinating anecdotes, like his story about the history of Tijuana. All the land was deeded to a Mexican family in 1862 by President Benito Juarez, but the family never did anything with their title. So squatters moved onto the land, then more squatters, and even more squatters, until by the turn of the 20th century Tijuana was a city with a bigger population than San Diego. Meanwhile a private corporation bought the family’s title and filed a lawsuit seeking ownership of everything on the land. No one thought the lawsuit had a prayer of succeeding — how could you take away an entire city from its people and businesses and government and give it to a private corporation? — but that’s exactly what happened in 1963, when the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the corporation owned all 26,000 acres of Tijuana. The astonished Mexican government was forced to buy off the corporation by creating the very first maquiladora zone on empty land east of Tijuana, exempting any industries built there from Mexican taxes and labor laws. And so the maquiladora system was born. Nick concludes with his favorite motto, always punctuated with a can-you-even-believe-it? laugh — “Only in Mexico, man.”

The thing I love most about our conversations? Nick is nothing like Saman and my male in-laws, shooing the women from the room when it’s time to discuss business or politics, treating me like an idiot just because they have a framed MBA diploma on their wall and I don’t. All they ever do is talk at me. Nick talks with me. The girl with only a high school degree, when he’s almost a Ph.D. But somehow I don’t feel self-conscious at all. He makes it totally cool to ask “What do you mean?” or “Why is that significant?” or whatever stupid question pops into my head. It must be all his practice as a TA dealing with students not much younger than me.

Afterwards we meander in the direction of the border, dashing from one sheltering overhang to the next — dripping trees, shadowy building porticos, the garish canopies which advertise strip club entryways — while the rain turns Avenida Revolucion into a ribbon of oil. We don’t really have a destination, just a list of clubs I made in my list-making fashion. Nick wants to go someplace “Mexican”, his code for avoiding American tourists. He’s okay sharing a sidewalk with them, but that’s about where it ends.

Eventually we arrive at Las Pulgas, which looks like a really ugly office building but is actually the discoteca with the largest dancefloor in Tijuana. In fact, it’s so large that boxing matches are held there and televised worldwide. Including tonight. “You wanna check it out?” Nick asks, cocking an eyebrow at me.

No, I don’t want to check it out. I hate boxing. Hate hate hate it. Overhearing me, the sharkskin-suited doorman glides over to inform us that tonight’s fight has been moved to El Foro — the Forum — because it’s too big even for Las Pulgas. Instead there’s a supercool dj crew from Mexico City. That’s exactly how he says it — “supercool dj crew from Mexico City”. I’m instantly sold, but Nick ushers me into the club frowning in disapproval.

“We don’t…have to…go here,” I say in bursts over my shoulder, navigating past a tattooed bouncer who’s frisking for weapons to the cashier inside, a young kid with no chin and a straggly mustache.

Nick opens his wallet, colorful with the greens of American dollars and the blues, yellows and pinks of Mexican pesos. “Nah, I’m cool with this. I just wish they had a local dj instead. I like nortec way better than that eurotrash shit they mix in Mexico City.”

“Don’t even get me started, senor,” the cashier agrees, handing back the change with a what-can-you-do? face.

“What’s nortec?” I ask as we slip through the doors and into the club.

“Nortec stands for norteno techno. A local mix of electronica and narcocorridos — you know what narcocorridos are?” When I shake my head, he continues, “They’re ballads about druglords and gang bangers. Kinda like hardcore American thug rap, at least in terms of material. The actual songs are traditional ranchero music with accordions and horns and everything. So blend that with electronica and you get nortec.”

I try to ask him something about narcocorridos, but my question is lost in the swelling beats. We’ve reached the edge of the dancefloor, a churning sea of mostly-brown limbs packed shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. I can look clear across the vast space to the elevated stage, where colored floodlights pulse on a bank of djs manning turntables. Sometimes it’s cool being this tall.

A palm settles against the small of my back, gently steering me through the crowd. Nick’s hand, seeping warmth. The demure intimacy of his touch is sexier than any of the near-copulation happening on the dancefloor.

We head for the bar, only visible as flashes of polished aluminum in the crowd. Above it the entire wall is hung with gigantic video screens that flicker and pulse in a rhythmic montage of images. The only one that lingers on my memory is a close-up shot of Gwen Stefani belting it out, practically committing fellatio on a microphone.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” Nick yells in my ear.

“JUST BEER,” I yell back.

He gets a bartender’s attention and points at the banner overhead — Bud Lite, the beer of the month — then makes a fist with two fingers extended. I’m struck by his ingenuity. If it was me ordering, I’d probably shout at the bartender until my vocal cords bled.

We find a column to lean against and drink our beers, tipping back the bottles so they turn into kaleidoscopes in the lights. I’m stealing glances at his profile out of the corner of my eye. I like him better this way, bareheaded, even if his bald spot shines whenever a spotlight rakes across it.

Half a beer later, I’m drunk enough to let Nick grab my wrist and lead me onto the dancefloor, where we’re pressed together in the crush of bodies. He twists to the beat effortlessly. I shift my weight from one dress boot to the other and flail my arms in the air, trying to copy a girl nearby who’s dancing like something out of a music video.

That’s how I become aware of the Mexicans checking us out. We tower over most of them, an uncommonly tall gringo and a downright freakishly tall gringa. Most glances are fleeting, but I start to notice a pattern of repeat glances from women — mexicanas eying Nick like red meat. He’s a beguiling combination of looks and American citizenship. Whenever one of them tries to dance closer, I deflect her with a nasty hip. Oops.

And just like that, it’s later.

Way later.

I must’ve had too much to drink, because I’m sprawled across the front seat, woozy, my head in Nick’s lap. Overhead his left arm grasps the steering wheel. His right arm drapes warmly down my shape, palm resting on my hip.

“Nick,” I murmur, and feel him move below my cheek. His lap shifting. Stiffening. And that’s when I decide to pretend I’m asleep and ignorant…